To ???, pt 5

A lie is justified if it does not benefit you.

In some cases, however, whether something is a lie at all depends on other people, and this may mean it is the responsibility of someone else to ensure the above situation with regards to purity, even when the implications of this are an unwanted result. 

https://daughterofankh.blogspot.com/2009/06/phase.html

https://daughterofankh.blogspot.com/2009/11/greatest-adventure.html

Greta posted stories about support for transgender people.

When I was on Guildcafe (site started by people who played Guild Wars, but intended for people from all MMOs and maybe other game types), there was a female person who posted on the forums about how, in her work, she encountered many people who physically or genetically did not fit into traditional gender classifications. Out of the small pool of people who visited the site, and the even smaller pool of people who used a photo of themselves as their profile picture, she was the most attractive person.

The second story Greta posted, from @transgender_together, says,

Transgender people are increasingly targeted.

The number of anti-trans bills proposed around the world has steadily increased in recent years.

Trans people, particularly transgender women of color, continue to be targeted with violence and killed.

I'm not linking the original post by @transgender_together because it's a multi-image post, and Instagram has decided that since my browser hasn't been updated in four years, it doesn't need to serve a webpage that allows me to view more than the first image. But I will link this:

https://www.instagram.com/transgender_together/reel/DWFR-Rfje9o/

I didn't bother watching to the end, and Instagram doesn't let me see its full duration so I don't know how much I didn't watch. This is honestly something that has been lost in the discussions by people like J.K. Rowling. I have no idea what she thinks about this, because I have never seen it come up in the Chirp Club posts she has responded to or in replies to her there.

I mentioned in the only 2013 post that's currently published (which of course, I republished after having hidden it, in order to show Greta that I had mentioned climate change that early on) that a male player had protected my female paladin Jinsuu in World of Warcraft after I acted like I was AFK after losing an item roll. We had earlier done the Verigan's Fist quest chain together, going to places like Blackfathom Deeps and killing the elite mobs outside of the dungeon, although we probably needed to recruit additional players for the Shadowfang Keep portion of it. And I think he was part of a PvP raid I organized on Sun Rock Retreat in the Stonetalon Mountains, which would have consisted mainly of me and him killing guards, as no other players in the raid were high enough level to do so. (We would have been in mid-40s, I think the guards would have been lvl 40, so it was not at all easy to kill more than one guard at once, and the flight master and his enraged wyverns were too high-level for us to threaten.)

Would he have protected my character if she was not female? He asked me at least once if I was female in real life, and I did not give a clear answer. I sent him mining ores and stuff, without ever asking or expecting him to give me any items. So if I was dishonest by not telling him my real-life gender, I did not benefit from my interactions with him.

In Aion, there was a male player who sort of made an 'advance' on me. It was brief; I don't recall the details. I think he asked if I was female in real life, and I said no. The next day, he claimed not to remember anything that had happened. I sent him an in-game mail with an apple (worth almost nothing) and a million kinah, the in-game currency: a healing potion was worth 1k~3k kinah. I vaguely remember that I referenced the apple at some later point, like maybe with a letter with the subject 'apple'; I just remember that he got higher level and so started grouping with higher-level players, and maybe wasn't having too much fun, while I had basically stopped leveling except through the unwanted experience that I got from crafting items. (My in-game status was, "I am a turtle desu", referencing my lack of leveling.) He might have voted in at least one of the polls I made on the forums, about fixing PvP and making the game more fun (so that it wouldn't die, but it did). Once again, if I deceived someone by playing a female character, I made sure that I did not benefit.

Noting that the person who had a female character in Aion named Caelasa knew that I had a female character (necessary to mention, because our characters were in different physical locations most of the time we talked) and still 'made a move' on me. My response to this was to say that I was 'taken', which is passive language that would more typically be used by a female, and it turned out that this was false: I was not 'taken', shown by Mei's refusal to meet me about six months later. So I could be said to have made an implied lie here, that I was female, and also the unintentional lie that I was 'taken' when I was not. I sent this person Caelasa a thousand health potions with the subject 'For the war effort', but I still don't consider the matter resolved, even though my character has been renamed due to activity, I don't know if friend lists would still be active even if this person's character still exists, and in general it would be difficult — but not impossible — for Caelasa and I to communicate again. So I have done my best to ensure that if I lied to Caelasa, by possibly suggesting that I was female and by saying that I was 'taken', that I did not benefit.

A lot of the violence that transgender people receive is because they benefit financially from acting as the gender which they say they are. They do not always benefit from acting as that gender: for example, Justine Tunney, who created the website occupywallst.org, in 2012 or 2013 posted a photo of herself holding up a sign, but also posted credit to the person who had taken the photo. If a photographer takes photos for free, without receiving publicity in return, it is a favor to the subject of the photos, but giving the photographer credit makes it more transactional: the photos for publicity. If Justine Tunney had received a favor in an unbalanced transaction, there could have been the possibility it was because of her gender.

Transgender people have to consider the possibility that people will think they are lying. This is just their situation.

I think a bigger problem is the 'love makes you evil' meme. Is it bad to want to have children? Is it bad to prefer that someone you fall in l*ve with is not transgender, which could preclude the possibility of later having children?